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Chapter 49 — Kirigakure Cemetery, Mei Terumī
The west side of Kirigakure bordered the sea, giving the area a pleasant tropical climate; at midday the sun shone brightly.
The breeze carried a faint saltiness from the ocean.
Near the village's western edge, at the corner, lay Kirigakure's cemetery.
Konan, disguised by transformation jutsu, walked slowly to the cemetery gate holding a bouquet of white chrysanthemums, posing as an ordinary villager coming to pay respects.
Two bored Kirigakure ninja stood guard at either side of the gate, the sea wind lulling them toward sleep.
Villagers entered with heavy steps and solemn faces carrying white flowers; others left empty-handed, having vented all emotion, their eyes red from crying.
Konan followed a curly-haired woman through the gate without hindrance and stepped into the cemetery.
Inside felt like another world. The noise of the outside street faded away.
The western sky fell silent. Only the soft shuffle of footsteps and muffled sobs echoed.
The air itself seemed infected by sorrow and slowed.
Konan stopped and scanned the cemetery.
Row after row, column after column—endless gray-white tombstones stretched to the horizon, too many to take in at once.
Scattered figures knelt before certain stones, crying aloud.
She moved toward the right side, where Kirigakure's shinobi were buried; the left side held ordinary villagers.
In a voice so low only Alex could hear, she whispered, "So... even the citizens and shinobi of these Great Villages suffer..."
Konan watched those kneeling backs. "Their relatives and friends are buried here; they mourn, they grieve, they ache..."
"But..." Her eyes turned icy, and a bone-deep chill radiated from her. "These executioners with blood-stained hands are remembered and honored as heroes... while the nameless victims they killed—those whose homes were destroyed—who remembers them?"
"So many small countries, small villages, and families were destroyed by these Great Villages, left as corpses in the corners. No one cared, no one remembered; they were left to be eaten by beasts."
Alex listened quietly and said nothing.
Konan had been an orphan raised amid the chaos of the Land of Rain. In thirty years she had seen countless innocent civilians swept up by the wars of the great nations: homes destroyed, people displaced, eaten by famine or slaughtered in battle. Too many had died horribly.
Seeds of hatred had been planted long ago.
Seeing those former executioners now commemorated while grieving villagers knelt at their graves made Konan's emotions flare; she felt only fury. The sight of the mourners seemed hypocritical and unbearable.
Why could those executioners lie peacefully in their graves and be honored, while the innocent dead were reduced to rotting bodies by the roadside?
Konan walked coldly past the rows of stones toward the cemetery's deepest part.
"No pain left unshared," she murmured. "Pain must be felt for peace to come—Nagato once said that."
"But why..." she could not understand, "these living have already felt pain, so why do they keep waging war?"
"Wave after wave of death, people mourn and cry; then the mourners go back into battle and become the next wave to be mourned... an endless cycle."
"The chains of pain and hatred only tighten and drag everyone deeper..."
Alex projected words onto Konan's palm:
[So we need power that transcends everything to break these chains.]
Over decades, hatred born from repeated wars could not be dissolved by hollow calls for "mutual understanding." Only overwhelming power—stronger than anyone else—could compel those consumed by killing and hatred to obey.
"That's right. Only power can shape the shinobi world into what we want." Konan inhaled, calming herself, and reached the cemetery's heart.
No living soul remained in sight; silence deepened. Only occasional insect chirps and birdsong pierced the hush.
Before her stood two massive tombstones, twice the size of the others. They were new—weathering hadn't yet marred their faces; they seemed only a few years old.
Konan stared at the two gray-white stones; black characters were clearly carved on them:
[Monument to the Yuki] and...
[Monument to the Kaguya]
Only the clan names were engraved—no individual names, no dates—just sparse characters.
Konan had not seen a single Yuki or Kaguya name among the other dense tombstones. In the entire vast Kirigakure cemetery, only these two monuments bore the names of bloodline clans.
Alex felt a flash of disappointment. These were clearly memorial stones—cenotaphs—with no actual bodies interred below.
He still needed to check.
A white thread slipped from his form along Konan's thigh and probed beneath the ground, then retracted.
[Below is empty. There are no bodies of the two clans.]
Konan read the black script on her palm and whispered, "Yuki... Kaguya..."
"Once great bloodline families are reduced to two stone markers..." she trailed off.
A sultry female voice answered from behind, "What a pity, isn't it..."
Footsteps approached. Konan did not turn.
A voluptuous woman came to stand beside her, placing two bunches of white chrysanthemums before the twin monuments. Her chest gleamed white under the sun, and a tangle of chestnut-red curls fell to hide one eye; the other revealed a fox-like green iris.
She was dangerously intoxicating—mature, alluring, and deadly.
— The Fifth Mizukage, Mei Terumī.
She stood beside Konan and looked at the clan names. Her scarlet lips parted. "I didn't expect anyone would still remember the Yuki and the Kaguya after more than ten years."
"They were victims of the Bloody Mist era—wrongs committed by our village." Mei continued. "Now all I can do is erect monuments to them and commemorate the bloodline families that once served Kirigakure so faithfully."
During the Bloody Mist, both clans had been annihilated; aside from collecting some bloodline samples, corpses were gathered and burned en masse. Even the bodies previously buried in the cemetery were exhumed and incinerated.
Gradually, the surrounding insect sounds and birdsong vanished. Dead silence settled over the cemetery's depths; only the faint breathing of the two figures by the stones remained.